While currently gastronomy is claimed to be the solution for vacant retail space (although at lower rents due to lower margins!) the food delivery business will become a space disruptor in the near future. While companies like Uber Eats, Deliveroo and takeaway.com are already visible in public, popular new formats such as shadow kitchens or home delivery of groceries are on the rise.

Underlying UK property fundamentals robust outside the retail sector: pricing relative to bonds remains attractive with limited good quality supply and no over-leverage-expectation of modest economic growth predicts performance over the next five years driven primarily by income.

Political uncertainty, slowing economies and “lower for longer” – the topics discussed in 2019 continued well into 2020. Apart from Brexit, the US presidential election jumped into focus, while the trade dispute between US and China is still ongoing. For the Eurozone, we expect the economy to grow by 0.9%, slightly lower than the Consensus Forecast of 1.0%. This is marginally better than was expected.